


why'd you only call me when you're high

by BDEblueyes



Series: The Graveyard [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:53:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28692003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BDEblueyes/pseuds/BDEblueyes
Summary: Jou walks in on Kaiba doing drugs in a hotel bathroom when he's supposed to be getting ready to give a speech.---Jounouchi Katsuya’s heart was breaking.Continuing to break.Had been breaking for the last three years.
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Kaiba Seto
Series: The Graveyard [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103105
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	why'd you only call me when you're high

Jounouchi Katsuya’s heart was breaking. 

Continuing to break. 

Had  _ been _ breaking for the last three years.

\---

“Seto? What the fuck are you doing?”

They were at another one of Kaiba’s work functions - Jou couldn’t remember what this one’s purpose was. It didn’t really matter. He’d find out soon enough when the CEO gave his speech. 

Except that Kaiba wasn’t getting ready to give his speech. He wasn’t going through his notes, or checking his tech for the eight billionth time, or doing a last-minute preen in front of the gilded mirror. 

He was snorting coke off the marble countertop in the ridiculously fancy hotel bathroom.

His husband looked up at him, blue eyes wild and brimming with guilt. “Just… just taking the edge off.”

“Are you insane?” Jou asked, his eyes closed to dam the tidal wave of tears he knew was coming. 

“Babe-”

“No!” the blond said. The tone of his voice was strained. He drew back, feeling the door behind him. “Don’t you fuckin’ dare ‘babe’ me right now.”

Kaiba moved towards him, reaching out as if to embrace him. “Katsuya,” he whispered.

“I’m goin’ home. We’ll talk in the mornin’.” 

He walked out of the bathroom, out of the hotel. He walked right past the Kaiba Corp limo that was parked outside the hotel, waiting to take them home after the banquet.

He walked. Walking was easy. 

Thinking was hard. 

Emotions were the hardest.

He walked. In the dark. In an Armani suit that he hated but wore because appearances mattered in the business world and he didn’t want to disappoint Seto. In shoes that cost more than an average family car and looked like heaven but felt like hell. 

He walked all the way back home. 10km through the heart of the city. To the penthouse apartment they shared

It took hours.

Part of him expected the brunet to be there, waiting to hash this out with him. He thought that’s what  _ he _ would do if the roles were reversed. But they weren’t, and he wasn’t. There was no world in which they  _ could _ have been reversed...

Jou collected some clothing and toiletries from the main bedroom and moved himself into the guestroom for the night. He had always been a morning shower kind of person, but tonight the hurt clung to him like so much second-hand smoke.

He cried in the shower. Howled. Deep, soul-rending, heaving sobs. 

And then he crawled, naked and still damp, into the guest bed to cry some more.

He woke the next morning with his eyes red-ringed and puffy, his throat hoarse, and his chest feeling like it was caught in a vise. 

Even with the door to the guest room closed, Jou could hear his husband yelling in his office on the other side of the apartment. They had been sure the unit was soundproofed before they bought it, not wanting to cause trouble for their neighbours, but the interior walls may as well have not been there.

He dragged himself from the bed pulling on the grey sweats and black hoodie he’d grabbed the previous night. Well, he tried, anyway. The hoodie he’d picked up actually belonged to Kaiba, though he hardly wore it, and was too narrow in the shoulders for Jou. 

Bare-chested, he left the guest room, crossed the living room, and ran up the stairs to the main bedroom to find something else to wear. When he came back down, more appropriately clothed, the brunet was waiting for him.

“I thought I saw Barry Allen go by,” he said in a voice that was one part ‘I know I fucked up’, one part ‘I deserve whatever’s coming’, and one part ‘please don’t be mad at me’.

“Funny,” Jou said, brushing past him. He needed coffee if he was going to deal with this. 

His husband followed him to the kitchen. 

The blond busied himself, fussing with the coffee machine. He wasn’t exactly ignoring Seto, he just needed his armour before he went into battle. 

“Okamoto is on his way with a Fairfax for you.”

“Is that what you were shouting about earlier?” he asked, pulling the milk out of the fridge. “Getting an underling to drive here from Tokyo with a breakfast sandwich?”

“Your  _ favourite _ breakfast sandwich. And not driving.” Kaiba’s words were almost drowned out by the sound of a helicopter approaching.

Jou’s eyes widened. “You didn’t…”

“I will be right back,” the brunet said, leaving the apartment, presumably for the helipad on the roof.

He took a deep breath, trying to centre himself. 

Seto was ridiculous, had a flair for the dramatic, and often pushed him to the very limits of his sanity (case in point), but he was also capable of a softness, a gentleness, an empathy that most people would never know. 

He was Jou’s whole heart and soul.

“You can’t bribe me, you know,” Jou said when his husband returned. 

Kaiba bristled at that. “I’m not trying to bribe you.” He placed the bag on the counter and slid the sandwiches out. 

“Sure.” The smell hit Jou’s nose, at once tantalising and nauseating. The way the brunet was acting, like this was just an ordinary Friday morning, turned his stomach. How could he be so domestic, so  _ normal _ , when not twelve hours earlier… 

“I’m not. I was planning to take you to Tokyo today. I put our breakfast order in yesterday, so we wouldn’t have to wait or waste time. But when you didn’t come to bed last night, I thought you wouldn’t want to go…”

“You thought right,” the blond said, taking a sip of his coffee and pointedly  _ not _ touching the sandwich. 

“Katsuya-”

“Why, Seto?” he asked. He forced himself to look at his husband then, despite the nasty roiling in his stomach when he did.

Kaiba looked down, fidgeting with one of the napkins that had come with the food.

Well, Jou thought, at least he has the good sense to look ashamed of himself.

“Stress,” he said quietly. “I’ve been under a lot of pressure.”

“And instead of talking to me or Mokuba, you turned to drugs?”

He shrugged. “It was… convenient. I-”

“How long have you been using?” 

“I’m not ‘using’.”

Jou frowned. “So what were you doing last night then? Making tea?”

“No. I- I’ve done coke a couple, maybe four times,” the brunet said, the napkin slowly becoming confetti between his elegant fingers. “The first time was about a year ago. It’s really nothing.”

He choked back a sob. 

Kaiba looked up then and saw the tears staining his husband’s face. He stood, rounded the counter, and took Jou in his arms. “Babe, I’m sorry.”

Jou leaned into him, in spite of himself. This had always been his safe space. The place where all the troubles of the world melted away. Where it was just the two of them.

“After all the shit with my dad… addiction ruined both of our lives, and-”

“It’s not an addiction. It’s not even a habit.”

The blond shook his head. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t. Katsuya, you will always be my number one.”

“You didn’t even lock the door,” Jou said, quietly. “What if it had been someone else who came in? Seto, what if it had been a member of the press? What about the adoption?”

The taller man blanched. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I got so caught up in- I’ve been such an idiot.”

“Just tell me last night was the last time,” he said into the soft black cloth of Kaiba’s turtleneck. 

Slender fingers cradled Jou’s chin, tilting his face upward to meet the deep blue oceans looking back at him. Their lips met. 

“Last night.” 

Kiss. 

“Was.” 

Kiss. 

“The last time.”

Kiss.

They melted together, there against the kitchen counter, coffee and breakfast sandwiches forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> When I started writing this, the plan was that there would be multiple scenes like this. Eventually Jou would break and ask for a divorce. Kaiba would only agree to a separation, and he would keep calling Jou, trying to get him back. 
> 
> I was feeling very angsty when I "planned" it. Now I'm not anymore, so... into the graveyard.


End file.
